1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of projection television systems. More particularly, this invention relates to a projection television system where a modulated laser beam is scanned across a surface by rotating mirrors and where areas of the surface illuminated by the laser form pixels of a video image.
2. Description of Related Art
Projection screen video display systems are known. For example, projection screen televisions with a plurality of LCD light valves that individually control the transmission of red, green, and blue light sources are commercially available. An LCD light valve is placed in front of each of the three light sources, and color signals for red, green, and blue portions of a video image are used to drive the LCD associated with each respective light source. Lenses focus the transmitted light onto a viewing screen, so that the three color images are superimposed to form a full-color image.
Other known projection screen video systems use cathode ray tubes to generate an image that is then magnified by a system of lenses and projected onto a screen.
These systems suffer from the drawback that the resolution of the projected image is fixed by the manufactured resolution of the LCDs or the CRT. As a result, a system designed to display an NTSC format signal with a resolution of 640.times.480 and an aspect ration of 4.times.3 will not optimally display an HDTV signal using the SMTPE 240M standard with a resolution of 1920.times.1035 and an aspect ratio of 16.times.9.